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This groundbreaking book argues that health and medical media, with their unique goals and production values, constitute a rich cultural and historical archive and deserve greater scholarly attention. Original essays by leading media scholars and historians of medicine demonstrate that Americans throughout the twentieth century have learned about health, disease, medicine, and the human body from movies. Heroic doctors and patients fighting dread diseases have thrilled and moved audiences everywhere; amid changing media formats, medicine's moving pictures continue to educate, entertain, and help us understand the body's journey through life. Perennially popular, health and medical media are also complex texts reflecting many interests and constituencies including, notably, the U.S. medical profession, which has often sought, if not always successfully, to influence content, circulation, and meaning. Medicine's Moving Pictures makes clear that health and medical media representations are "more than illustrations," shows their power to shape health perceptions, practices, and policies, and identifies their social, cultural, and historical contexts. Contributors: Lisa Cartwright, Vanessa Northington Gamble, Rachel Gans-Boriskin, Valerie Hartouni, Susan E. Lederer, John Parascandola, Martin S. Pernick, Leslie J. Reagan, Naomi Rogers, Nancy Tomes, Paula A. Treichler, Joseph Turow
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Medicine’s Moving Pictures
Rochester Studies in Medical History Senior Editor: Theodore M. Brown Professor of History and Preventive Medicine University of Rochester ISSN 1526–2715
The Mechanization of the Heart: Harvey and Descartes Thomas Fuchs Translated from the German by Marjorie Grene The Workers’ Health Fund in Eretz Israel Kupat Holim, 1911–1937 Shifra Shvarts Public Health and the Risk Factor: A History of an Uneven Medical Revolution William G. Rothstein Venereal Disease, Hospitals and the Urban Poor: London’s “Foul Wards,” 1600–1800 Kevin P. Siena Rockefeller Money, the Laboratory and Medicine in Edinburgh 1919–1930: New Science in an Old Country Christopher Lawrence
Health and Wealth: Studies in History and Policy Simon Szreter Charles Nicolle, Pasteur’s Imperial Missionary: Typhus and Tunisia Kim Pelis Marriage of Convenience: Rockefeller International Health and Revolutionary Mexico Anne-Emanuelle Birn Medicine’s Moving Pictures: Medicine, Health, and Bodies in American Film and Television Edited by Leslie J. Reagan, Nancy Tomes, and Paula A. Treichler
Medicine’s Moving Pictures Medicine, Health, and Bodies in American Film and Television Edited by LESLIE J. REAGAN, NANCY TOMES, AND PAULA A. TREICHLER
UNIVERSITY OF ROCHESTER PRESS
Copyright © 2007 by the Editors and Contributors All rights reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation, no part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system, published, performed in public, adapted, broadcast, transmitted, recorded, or reproduced in any form or by any means, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. First published 2007 University of Rochester Press 668 Mt. Hope Avenue, Rochester, NY 14620, USA www.urpress.com and Boydell & Brewer Limited PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF, UK www.boydellandbrewer.com ISBN-13: 978–1–58046–234–1 ISBN-10: 1–58046–234–0 ISSN: 1526–2715 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Medicine’s moving pictures : medicine, health, and bodies in American film and television / edited by Leslie J. Reagan, Nancy Tomes, and Paula A. Treichler. p. ; cm. — (Rochester studies in medical history, ISSN 1526–2715 ; v.10) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-1-58046-234-1 (harcover : alk. paper) ISBN-10: 1-58046-234-0 1. Medical personnel in motion pictures. 2. Medical personnel on television. 3. Medicine in motion pictures. 4. Medicine on televisio